jensoko wrote:
>> Once again, thank you so much for your help. I suspect next time I shop for a laptop, I'm going to make sure I've got an nvidia card in it.
>
Jen
+1 to that comment. Macbook Air for X-mas anyone?
It doesn't really matter whether you use Kubuntu or Ubuntu. Personally I find Gnome a bit 'scrappy' (notification area - cough, cough) but each to their own! :)
Just be aware however that KVM (the window manager for KDE) has 'builtin' desktop effects like Compiz. As these utilise the graphics card it's important to turn these off completely in the main KDE System settings GUI (before trying any 3D games in Wine).
I think this the Personal Package Archive is the one that has the latest ATI display drivers (disclaimer: maybe):
PPA for bleeding edge Radeon gallium - mesa testing drivers (https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/radeon)
I installed these for someone else with a X1650 Pro desktop card. They didn't break his system (Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid). But he's not a gamer - so I can't comment on OpenGL performance...
Just remember it's important to make sure that you try some native Linux OpenGL 3D games before you start running 3D/DirectX Windows games via Wine!
I find Phoronix (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=category&item=Display%20Drivers) to be quite a useful source of background information about the problems you are experiencing. You know an overview - rather than wading through 200 page forum threads!! Just don't believe everything Michael Larabel says on his website (like Valve planning to release a native Linux version of their Steam client)... 8)
I was using an X1950 Pro desktop graphics card around the time that ATI decided to drop support for all cards prior to the X2000 series! I feel your pain. Unfortunately you would have to go all the way back to (K)Ubuntu 8.04/8.10 to get a proprietary driver to work with your graphics card... I can report (accurately) that the ATI proprietary driver was rubbish at the time. I remember having to play Half-Life 2.0 forced into DirectX 8.0 mode...
I would agree with 'Mister' about dual-booting. An X1600 is a pretty decent gaming card under Windows. The open source drivers for the X1600 under Linux are very immature. However they progressing at phenomenal pace - since AMD/ATI started releasing details of their GPU API ~3 years ago. Give them another 2 years and who knows... You might be a notebook as an AMD graphics card!!
Bob